@davidclowery: Is Spotify Kicking STIM the Dog?

For those of you not familiar with this expression, “kicking the dog” is when some does something bad to you, and you in turn do something bad to someone weaker than you.

We call your attention to this odd dispute in Sweden between Spotify and STIM which is the Swedish performing rights organization for songwriters. Spotify has for the second time decided to delay payments to Swedish songwriters because they have “unmatched” tracks. Generally unmatched performing rights royalties get paid to the societies anyway, and then the society sorts out who is to be paid. We are completely puzzled as to why Spotify would take on this extra burden when they are not required to. Performing rights are easy. This is in marked contrast to mechanical royalties in US, in which the burden (by law) falls on the service to sort out unmatched royalties.